


Brother's Keeper

by eirabach



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Brotherly Affection, Brotherly Angst, Gen, episode tag: EOS, episode tag: SOS Part 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25548265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eirabach/pseuds/eirabach
Summary: John and Gordon are nothing alike.Gordon and John are exactly the damn same.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	1. Eos

He expects Scott, and apparently so does Alan, skittering away as he does before Three's even cooled down. It had been Scott to insist upon his return, after all, all gritted teeth and clenched jaw and John hadn't wanted to, not in the least, but he knows when he's beaten and he knows when Scott's about to have a stroke. Leaving Eos, whatever she may be, alone had seemed considerably less dangerous, on balance, than refusing a man with Scott's resting blood pressure.

He wishes it was Scott.

The figure behind dad's desk looks oddly out of place. Too bright, maybe. Too small, and yet too much all at once. John remembers, with the awful clarity of all traumatic childhood memories, the moment his mother had tucked his very own baby brother into his arms, how the wires and tubes had curled around his fingers and caught on his sweater. How he'd looked at him with all the sweet minded sincerity of a preschooler and thought _What am I supposed to do with you?_

Not much has changed. 

"Welcome to the consequences of your own actions," Gordon drawls. There's a half eaten celery crunch bar on the desk, damp hand prints on the french polish. "Scott's been called out."

John raises an eyebrow. "And he asked _you_ to debrief me?"

Gordon smiles, tilts his head to one side, then stuffs the rest of the crunch bar in his mouth. " _Nah_."

A prickle of sweat erupts at the back of John's neck and settles, clammy and unpleasant, under the collar of the suit he's yet to remove. He'd intended to handle Scott then head straight back up. Gordon wrangling, he knows from experience, is another matter.

"Where's Virgil?" he asks, and despite his best efforts he knows his voice isn't as steady as it should be, could be. Gordon just chews. Stares. John shuffles his weight, gravity messing with his balance. Gravity, and maybe, _maybe_ , guilt.

"I'm sorry about Alan."

Gordon doesn't look like their father, not like Virgil does, doesn't fill his spot like Scott, but when he leans back in the chair, arms folded, and says "Alan?" he's every inch their father's son. "You think we're mad over _Alan_?"

"I shouldn't have put him in danger I --"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Dad's chair creaks horribly as Gordon slams it forward. "Forget _Alan_."

A spluttered "Hey!" from the staircase.

Oh good. An audience.

John backs off, already calculating the required rate of reentry for the space elevator.

"If Scott's out I should get back --"

"Why?"

It's the way he says it that has John pause. Sharp. Bitter in a way that Gordon almost never is, and John knows why. He knows why, just as Gordon knows why he's itching to return to Five. It's just that they don't usually have to _say_ any of it. Not with Scott and Virgil around, anyway. They play their roles so well, smoothing over cracks formed from panic, that seeing those cracks written over Gordon’s face is -- perturbing, to say the least.

John wonders, vaguely, if Gordon ever sees the same stress fissures on him.

"Are you worried?" Gordon asks, utterly unnecessary but then that's always Gordon's way.

"About Scott?" That's not necessary either, because Gordon's already shaking his head before John's finished speaking, already on his feet before John can back away.

"No, Scott knows what he’s doing.” This is only partially true, in John’s experience, but anything else would be an admittance. A weakness. A dent in the armour that Gordon has forgotten to wear.

“Right.” And John’s looking for the exit, but Gordon’s already his side of the desk glaring up at him with an expression of determination that has never, in all their lives together, meant anything other than Gordon Getting His Way. “So you don’t need to go back, do you.”

“I should --”

“For _fuck’s_ sake, John! You could have _died_!”

“It wasn’t that bad.” But Gordon’s way too close now, far too close to lie to, “It worked out okay.”

“And if it _hadn’t_?”

“But it _did_.”

Gordon’s face is all screwed up now, pink and angry looking just like that scrawny little baby had been, and it -- it infuriates him, honestly. Because hasn’t he sat and watched? Hasn't he sat and watched hundreds and hundreds of times and Gordon -- Gordon watches _once_ and he thinks he has the right to -- 

The air rushes from his lungs as over five and a half feet of solid muscle collides with his solar plexus, gravity and little brother combining to send him flying several steps backwards until he’s caught by the back of a couch. Gordon _clings_ with a fierceness only equalled by the rather colourful language he growls into John’s shoulder and John, John knows what to do with rogue AIs and panicked rescuees, but when faced with the full fury of a Gordon hug he’s left flapping his hands rather uselessly at his brother’s back and looking about frantically for rescue. Alan shrugs at him from the stairs with an expression that says _I don’t know what you expected._

Scott, yelling.

Maybe a punch.

A punch would have been quicker. 

Possibly more pleasant.

Definitely less constricting.

"I feel like this has been an unnecessarily long hug.”

“Yeah, well. Didn’t know if I was gonna get the chance to again did I?”

John sighs, as best he can with Gordon doing his best boa impression around his ribcage. “It’s a risk we take, Gords, you know that.”

“Yeah, of course I just --” Gordon pulls away, doesn’t quite meet his eyes, something in his expression that John doesn’t know quite how to name. “Wasn’t expecting it to be _you_ with the noble sacrifice act.”

“You have a preference?” He’s trying to make light of it, a bit. And normally -- normally Gordon would be the first one to take the hint, would be right there with him turning it into a joke, just a close-call-cum-classic-story. Gordon would roll his eyes at Scott and distract Virgil and comfort Alan. Gordon wouldn’t look at him like this, like he’s _stupid_.

“Of course I do, _idiot_ ,” he says, all affection but still with that odd look about him, and John -- John who watches and listens and _knows_ , John who never misses a trick, a warning, can’t afford to, never will --

John just laughs, ruffles blond hair and, “All right, All right. I won’t tell Scott.”

Gordon doesn’t laugh. Just looks at him. And something John doesn’t quite understand curls behind his sternum. Just a heavy, sick little thing that doesn’t quite deserve the name dread but doesn’t ever really go away. Just sits. And waits. Nameless and illogical.

It’s two years before it rears its head again, exposes itself for what it is, what it always has been, and by then --

_Gordon, you’ve activated your emergency code._

_Gordon?_

_Gordon!_

It’s too late.


	2. SOS Part 2

It’s to Scott’s credit that he doesn’t outright tell him that it’s his fault, but then he doesn’t need to. John has eyes to see and ears to hear. John has the authority, the ability, to take control of any of their ‘birds at any time and just --

He didn’t. He doesn’t. He should have.

Scott doesn’t tell him that, either, only, “Thank fuck you’re here.”

And John doesn’t tell him that he doesn’t want to be -- that he’d rather be anywhere, anywhere, an actual million miles away, than sat on this ancient plastic chair listening to Alan pretend not to cry and waiting to see if his brother’s going to die.

Nobody had said anything, nothing except _surgery_ and _fractured neck_ and _coma_ and _internal bleeding_ and all of those words, they make sense.They’re the logical results of a human body meeting a large object at speed after all, and John knows plenty about that. John just couldn’t quite apply then to _Gordon_ , that’s all, so he preferred to pretend he hadn’t heard them at all.

But then Parker -- _Parker_ of all people -- had appeared in the waiting room with a cup of tepid, over sweet tea for her Ladyship and said, “All of this for a robot?”

And Scott had looked up from his hands, eyes bright, and John --

John had known.

This is _his_ fault.

Gordon had gone to save a robot.

To save Braman.

“ _Only Gordon_ ,” he’d scoffed when Virgil had told him, but Virgil, he knows.

“ _He gets it from you_.”

John had always thought it was frustrating, Gordon and Eos. The way they’d snipe and pick and fight on every rotation, how he’d _constantly_ have to play referee to the two of them even when he was supposed to be relaxing. _Eos, don’t_ . _Gordon, leave her alone._

Today’s descent had been the quickest yet, her voice quiet. Frightened.

“ _I do not like the odds, John_ .” A pause where a human might have held their breath. “ _I do not know how to reconcile the likely outcome with what I know of Gordon Tracy_.”

Because Eos knows, too.

She knows John couldn’t have stopped him.

 _Hypocrite_ . He hears it in Gordon’s voice, sees him leaning up against the bare white wall beside Virgil’s crumpled figure. Grinning, because he always is. Because he would be. _All this fuss for little old me?_

 _Noble sacrifice act_ , John thinks. _God. It was always you, wasn’t it?_

And that grin gets wider, brighter, until it’s a horrible, skull-like parody of the child John remembers. The brother he _loves_.

_Who else, idiot?_

Who else.

The nurse enters, Scott leaps to his feet, and Gordon -- Gordon fades away to nothing.

\---

They go in one at a time at first. Gordon’s still wired up, arm and leg held up at odd angles and he looks a little like a broken puppet, lying there in hospital issue pyjamas, a blanket tucked around his middle, machinery beeping proof of life as his eyes flick over to see who his latest -- his last visitor is.

He looks small, and John can’t _stand_ it.

“Are you -- coming in?” He can’t see if Gordon’s smiling from here, can’t imagine how he could be, but this is _Gordon_ and he sounds as though he is. “I promise I don’t bite.”

John smiles a wobbly little smile of his own. “I happen to know that’s a lie.”

“They say I’ve fractured my neck.” A long pause. “I think you’re probably safe.”

 _Safe_.

He’s _safe_.

John’s not exactly the family cuddler, Virgil and Alan between them have that role fully covered, but the moment he reaches Gordon’s bedside he buries his face in his unblemished shoulder, grabs at whatever unbandaged part of his little brother he can reach and just -- 

He doesn’t cry, but it’s a close run thing.

He looks up when he realises that perhaps his grip’s a little too tight, the lines at the corners of Gordon’s mouth look a little too deep. 

“What the _hell_ , Gordon.” It’s not a question. “What the _hell_.”

Gordon winces. "Let me go and I’ll tell you everything you want to hear.” 

That’s usually his line, and it sounds wrong from Gordon’s mouth. Foreign and faintly sinister, the words of some infiltrator that’s taken his brother’s broken body for their own, and it’s harder than it ought to be to release his grip, to watch the sluggish return of blood to the too pale skin.

“The whole truth?” John adjusts the edge of the blanket, mainly to avoid Gordon’s eyes. “Everything?”

Gordon’s voice is barely more than a croak, but he can still hear the eye roll in it. “Yes, starting with how ugly that shirt is.”

John scoffs, a sudden, bitter sort of choke. "Bit rich, wouldn’t you say?"

"I'm very rich."

“That’s assuming Scott hasn’t disowned you for this stunt.”

“Scott shoulda disowned me _years_ ago.” John doesn’t laugh, he’s still fiddling with the edge of the hospital blanket. It’s rough, the fabric the sort of hard wearing stuff that’s used for practicality not comfort. Boil washed and scoured until every bloodstain has faded away to nothing but a memory. Grey. Not at all Gordon. He should see about getting some of his things shipped over -- assuming the hospital will _take_ them but perhaps if he runs them through the industrial cleaner first --"John?"

Gordon’s good hand drops to his wrist, his fingers curling around just hard enough to still John’s own. There’s blood under his fingernails, a dark rivulet between his fingers they must have missed. "Mmmm?"

" _Don_ 't, okay. Don't." He pats his hand a little awkwardly. “It’s not your fault. I did what I had to do. Stop blaming yourself, you never could stop me anyway.”

John scowls. “I should. _Regularly_.”

"You won't," Gordon sighs, a soft, morphine loaded little thing. “I know.”

He does.


End file.
